Romance as the Adolescent Rose
by Yuzuriha
Summary: He meets a man whose face is flawless and blank. [Subaru/Seishirou, contains shota material]


Romance as the Adolescent Rose  
Sumeragi Subaru, 1983  
  
  
---------------------------------------------------------  
  
Romance, who loves to nod and sing,  
With drowsy head and folded wing,  
Among the green leaves as they shake  
Far down within some shadowy lake,  
To me a painted paroquet  
Hath been –a most familiar bird—  
Taught me my alphabet to say—  
To list my very earliest word  
While in the wild wood die I lie,  
A child –with a most knowing eye.  
  
  
---------------------------------------------------------  
  
  
Subaru remembered the insides of the car to be sticky and confining. The seat, covered in the   
jewels of childhood toys, happy and bright to the exultant young eye that was full of dreams. The   
window, tiny white misty fingerprints befuddled the surface, marring it to the point where Subaru's   
view of the outside was all mist and color, smudging everything into a singular blur.  
  
Such was the way of things.  
  
Hokuto bounced a ball smelling of plastics and artificial air playfully at the bottom of their seat. Her   
black Chinese swimsuit bottoms and multi-shaded greenish bikini looked Victorian under the pale,   
plain contrast of his white shorts and skin. He was smaller than her.  
  
"You should go out in the sun more, Su-chan! You don't want the birds to think you're a piece of   
white meat, do you? Do you want to get eaten three hundred years too early?!"  
  
Subaru didn't want to get eaten, and in the dark some nights before, the two of them had decided   
it would be quite funny to see their strict Grandmother in a swimsuit. Obviously, he feared   
Grandmother's wrath far more than Hokuto did, but the wondrous change in their Grandmother's   
face, alighted with parental fervor when his sister had asked, sang of triumph. They had done it   
just a few precious mornings ago.  
  
That day, instead of sitting down to take out his calligraphy pens and parchment scrolls, the old,   
dried away hind of the sheep it was made of showing the white lines of empty veins; instead of   
chanting words he understood perfectly over and over again in a foreign tongue, Subaru was a   
normal nine year old boy.  
  
He began to feel free, like the birds he wished would cover him and take his body, flying him   
higher and higher into the air until there was no one left to ask for anything. Nothing to apologize   
for up in the clouds. No longer would he have to even speak.  
  
Perfect quiet.  
  
Such was the sea. Subaru saw through the smudge-window that the water beyond threaded softly   
into the picture, the blue-gray blotching pleasantly and gradually filling all he could see. The   
dazzling light was too bright here even if it was somewhat cloudy, and he willed his eyelashes to   
cover his vision from the violence of the sun. The world became flashes of red and cool darkness   
like the pre-essence of the womb to Subaru, and when he opened them again the mist was gone,   
and the sea clearly visible in all it's cruelty.  
  
They claimed a spot on the beach, where there were not many people to be found for several   
yards. It was quiet and the waves beckoned, and Subaru looked and became additionally silent,   
out of respect. Hokuto began to excavate large piles of grainy beach, making noises on her own   
account, which made him nervous.   
  
Soon, little Hokuto was digging a holy shrine out of sand. Subaru kneeled in front of her   
incomplete, trash-string tasseled sand Kami, and she yelled at him for not waiting until a proper   
tribute was completed. He had really just wanted to look at it, not "pray", but he didn't say anything   
as he got up and padded away, dragging his pail and tiny blue shovel down to the far east of the   
beach.  
  
Someone down near the rocks was looking at him.  
  
Apprehensively with all his sixty pound frame, the little Omnyouji moved his sand utensils away   
from him and focused on the sea. All around him, there was blank, lifeless blue; freezing and   
murderous. Black towers of rocks stood against the waves; inside of them were labyrinths of   
mazes that a child could easily get lost in. The towers, he supposed, were really then not standing   
against the ocean, but just trapping lives with the promise of comfort.  
  
Once, Hokuto had told him about a fisherman and his daughter in old Tsukushi who had gone out   
so early the sea had not calmed itself. While the daughter in her airy yukuta collected pink and   
blue snails off the rocks, her father drifted away in his tiny fishing boat, trying to shout at her for   
help. His vessel angered the water kami, and he was thrown against rocks that broke apart his   
small ship, leaving him to become swallowed by it. The daughter was not dissonant, and loved   
her father, so when he became lost by the ocean she looked at her sails and said, "Look what   
you've done to my father! He was taken away by the water!". And she threw them back to the   
ocean, where they drowned.  
  
Subaru didn't like that story.  
  
His sister said, "It's funny because she killed the snails for no reason at all! They didn't do   
anything!" She'd been told the story by one of the miko at the Judgment by Scalding Water   
ceremony in Spring, and was scolded when she was told she didn't properly understand.  
  
He often wondered if their father was fishing in a boat and the it started to wander off to the deep   
ocean? He couldn't get back, and when he turned to call his distant pregnant wife, she was   
picking flowers and listening to the music of waves. Dressed in gray, her kimono beckoned to him   
as he floated out of reach. Salt and bubbles of dampness starting to eat away at the craft, the   
man slowly slipping under the sea and into the great below. Washing him away and making him   
disappear. His wife does not notice.  
  
To be murdered by the sea?  
  
Subaru choked. There was water and salt in his mouth, cold hands on his abdomen and ahead   
small toes dragged into the dark sand. A long path from his feet to the edge of the cackling death,   
crashing blue waters silent in his fluid filled ears as Subaru saw violet fused with blank china,   
rolling along the sand lines like the ghosts of snails. Breath for the first time since beginning   
clouded him as he looked up and saw a face. A beautiful person was looking at him, and it was   
the same as before. Those eyes watching him at the treacherous rocks, these hands giving him   
the blue pail and shovel.  
  
Subaru felt light-headed and hurt. The ocean loomed further away now as a monster in waiting.   
He clutched the pail and shovel while he sat on the sand and his feet stabbed themselves with a   
thousand needles he had swallowed in the breaking of a promise. He was really cold and wanted   
his futon, telling the person beside him so, whose face was kind and young. The beautiful person,   
a boy who was many years older than Subaru said at length, "An accident, little one?".  
  
He shivered, and the boy put his arms around him, making Subaru feel really warm. He liked   
being hugged, even by people he didn't know very well, and then even if Grandmother didn't   
approve. There weren't so many times when someone would hold the little Omnyouji, even when   
he was sad or when he was cold, like this or in other instances.  
  
"I'm cold and your cold.. so I'll hold you."  
  
Lightheaded and pale. He looked at the blue pail and his own hands that looked black and white   
to his un-discerning eye. The world of water spun upside down and the lines from toes were   
washing away like the father in the worm rotten boat. Salt from decay and the smell of warm and   
freezing death, the sea eating him up. The arms of the pretty gold eyed boy surrounded him, and   
made Subaru feel safe. He craned his neck upward and saw through the white lens that those   
long fingers part of large hands caressed his body and made it full of warmth. The thin transparent   
lips of the boy smiled and they together were filled with sleep as the sand became comfortable   
with their bodies. The black mazes of rocks surrounded them, like a impenetrable Chinese prison,   
spearing starfish grotesquely at the top and leaving them only shallow, dwindling pools in which to   
starve.  
  
Subaru thought of unpleasant things and he thought the boy understood them all. Together they   
thought of disagreeable things, and it was lovely because they thought them with each other.   
Subaru shivered, the heat of fingertips flying throughout his nerves, sensations of that awaited   
day of flight rushing toward him like the inevitable ocean.   
  
It was good.  
  
The boy above him, smiling encouragingly (but to what, he wondered?), brought Subaru's face to   
his and stroked it with those large, grown-up hands, making Subaru feel hazy. His eyes fell half-  
lidded, and he saw the man laugh pleasantly when Subaru nestled further into his hold, their   
faces each just centimeters apart. He distantly felt an arm around him fall under his legs, lifting   
him as sometimes an older cousin had done during very late ceremonies when Subaru fell   
asleep. He remembered their warmth, and this affection bloomed like the crawling ivy-like wisteria   
over his heart in Spring, making living things that were new and vibrant and beautiful. He was   
stood up on his own fragile legs, wobbling and holding on fearfully to the sturdy forearms of the   
pretty older boy, who smiled as always.  
  
He pulled Subaru with one strong arm into tender embrace. The other caressed the young   
unblushing face, Subaru blinking in confusion as he said,  
  
"Close your eyes."  
  
And he did as he was asked, feeling a sweet, soft sensation on his lips just seconds later. For a   
moment, the mind inside could not fathom what it might be; only recognizing the candied plum   
that befell his senses and mouth, the warm glowing string of a heart growing brighter and   
flowering into those blossoms, pink and white and always welcome. Enjoyment followed   
disorientation, and a sense of lost will with it, but taken along with the pleasure was a forgotten   
memory of feeling safe, and cared for, still alive. The wind and salt air caressed their bodies,   
whispers of ghosts that Subaru heard, wanting a part of him, wanting him, till the last of their kind   
was banished by the sweet violin of the stranger.  
  
It was over then, and he wondered. What new thing had this become?  
  
"Were you afraid?" asked the boy, and still he smiled pleasantly, still questioning him in a way that   
made Subaru no longer give in to pretense. He had not been frightening; rather, a gift had been   
given, a violation turned into some kind of loving justice. Roses fell before his eyes, the   
monochrome grays of the beach blending out with the red and flawless gold of those flowers, the   
stranger becoming more dear to his heart in every passing moment.  
  
He had begun to lift off the ground and feel free.   
  
"No, it was nice..", discomfiture threading through the dress. "Please do it again.", said he.  
  
The boy with no name bent and pressed his lips against Subaru's again, their mouths melting   
together because of the sweet tasting love the stranger held for him. He suddenly thought of   
cherry trees melting in the late Spring heat, and that's what this was like, sweet like the cherries   
and soft like the petals against young skin. He no longer felt the constant cold of the Death around   
him, that which ruined all a child's pretty dreams and nightly swept them off to a place were   
children never wake up. He had seen others in his dream wander towards that place, but the lips   
caressing his forbade him think of it as before; he might die here in the arms of the pretty gold   
eyed boy, choose this happiness and cross the black river in his embrace.  
  
He released Subaru as gently as it had begun, crossing fingers over the mouth of the boy who   
swayed in dizziness. He smiled and watched the young skin blush uncomfortably and look shy   
suddenly, the little hands curling into ever changing knots when Subaru looked to the sandy floor.  
  
An old woman's voice carried down the beach then, rasping with age and yet unrecognizable for   
the echoing in the rocks it made. The long black hair of Subaru floated in her direction as he   
turned to look, imagining the young man with him coming home and staying with him, the two of   
them walking to school together in the shaded sunshine of numerous afternoons, and many,   
many more kisses...  
  
He felt a tender hand slide down his back, all at once familiar and strange as so many things   
outside seemed to be; he had read the poems of Sei Shonagon speak of 'lust', and those fingers   
down the small of his spine spun and flowered into the term.  
  
"Subaru-kun..", Subaru let out a shaky breath at the mention of his name the man gave, and   
shuddered as the small legs under the boys' body nearly gave in. The name whispered past his   
ear, reddening it with it's rough exterior and smooth, flawless undertone. Given in some dusty,   
ragged memory, then forgotten.  
  
He stepped forward and let the man's fingers slide down and off him, wet fingertips shining —-  
sliding down and gracing his bottom, his long legs sweetly manipulated in the warmth of the   
man's large, adult hands.. he breathed arduous inhalations, feeling sick like drowning again. The   
water spun and ate at his skin, penetrating him with layers of salt and cold, sterile pins inside of   
him. Drowning in his touches..  
  
..and they were gone.  
  
The old woman's voice came again, louder. He turned around slowly, expecting the gold eyed boy   
to have disappeared like the dream that never came, looking askance to the monotone grating of   
his feet in gray white sand and the overpowering, ringing silence, the shadowy cloud of tresses   
carried by the wind into his eyes and seeing nothing.  
  
Awkward legs trembled to the roar below, the man stood and became impossibly tall, faraway and   
foreboding. He looked up, seeing the glistening golden eyes, like precious rings belonging to   
royalty or the brand new, sharp sight of a disk spinning inside the metallic confines of a scientific   
machine, calculating him from above. Somewhere Subaru realized that looking so much into a   
person's face was a delicate rudeness; though he could not discontinue looking regardless. There   
was something lovely in that visage, something..  
  
"Subaru-kun.." said he, looking down and down to the green stare that was the garden in Subaru's   
youth. The eyes contracted to slits as they looked longer than anyone would like, memorizing the   
features on the man's face, as he was sure he would soon forget them to the murmur of the quiet,   
lovely dead, strange immortals with long faces and deafening, rose colored eyes..  
  
The man began to speak down, down into the cold breath of air gliding past Subaru's naked back,   
whispering icily through the tiny collarbone, swirling across his round, sweet face like November.   
  
"The ocean is very pretty to you, isn't it? It's always moving and changing, growing up or slowing   
down." Subaru nodded, feeling confused and frightened by the cruel breeze and the way his   
words ran together, things he felt he'd said before sometime in a dream. The coarse, dead sand   
crumbled, he sank lower into the earth and desperately wanted to say anything..  
  
"I will make sure you never grow up, because you won't like me anymore, then."  
  
He smiled in ruins, white teeth looking malevolently pretty, and Subaru thought of the death in the   
water, a beautiful girl like a fish laughing to the sound of unnatural lights hitting like hollow silver   
spheres against the surface. A milk colored soul chorused after her at this haughty voice,   
childlike, unknowing.  
  
"But I want to grow up." said Subaru. "I want to love someone when I grow up."   
  
The smile disappeared, and the boy shivered, expecting dissent among the ruins in the man's   
dead smile, a sadness instead appearing in that gaze above him. And as he looked up, he found   
a strange, foreign land of adult lines, lies, and so the eyes, the eyes which were so very, endlessly   
tired..   
  
"I want to love someone when I grow up, too." said the gold eyed boy quietly, to nothing.  
  
Gently, the friendless, yellow flowered china in those emotionless mirrors shattered, and Subaru   
imagined the tear diminishing on his own skin akin to the icy remnants of a first snow, the girth of   
the virgin icicle salted and preserved in the sea. Toes pressed into the liquid earth, small limbs   
reached higher, an open, sweet mouth grasping into nothingness—the abyss of this man's cold   
touch—and like the blemishes on the perfectly empty horizon they were, embraced and melted   
together as they would to the blurry, faraway eye.  
  
  
---------------------------------  
  
  
Hokuto's long, thin legs made footprints in the sand like some off color icing as she dented the   
landscape piece by piece. His sister's high and reedy voice spun like seashells through his ears,   
bumping through the notes of her punctual song, the architecture of his thoughts crumbling not   
unlike the façade of a chateau in the sand.  
  
Green eyes opened cautiously, wandering slowly upward into the sun as if gun shy from a dream.   
Expectance came without knowing; he saw in the obscure distance an old woman making her   
gentle way across the towers of dust, holding her large hat to her hair and gliding minutely with   
the service of elevated sandals. As before, she called to him, and Hokuto giggled somewhere   
above, her round face staring at him with the idiosyncratic expression of innocence he had not   
seen for a long, long time.  
  
"It's time to go home, Subaru!"  
  
He knew only strong arms, the scent of pale cherries, and the sadness in a lingering, ruined   
smile. He had been swept away by the current of that open, beating heart, beguiling and secret as   
it might have continued to be.   
  
The car was empty and full of sunlight now, the afternoon keeping their deep breathing thick and   
filling, sleep coming easily to Hokuto as the despairing last Nocturne bleed out it's calming   
sorrow. He opened the window and smelled the air, smiling, listening to the violin through the   
howling wind, the sound disappearing into the romantic evening as they left.  
  
  
Of late, eternal Condor years  
So shake the very Heaven on high  
With tumult as they thunder by,  
I have no time for idle cares  
Through gazing on the unquiet sky.  
And when an hour with calmer wings  
Its down upon my spirit flings—  
That little time with lyre and rhyme  
To while away –forbidden things!  
My heart would feel to be a crime  
Unless it trembled with the strings.  
Edgar Allen Poe: Romance  
  
  
  
  
FINITION PROVISOIRE 


End file.
